


Renewal

by Krisslona



Category: Wonder Woman (2017)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-29
Updated: 2017-11-29
Packaged: 2019-02-08 08:56:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,007
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12861141
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Krisslona/pseuds/Krisslona
Summary: Grey-eyed Athena places a spear in her hand.





	Renewal

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Cinis](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cinis/gifts).



> DC EU lore is insane and I don't care about it.

Themyscira knows only spring.

Antiope remembers, long ago, in another land, other seasons. They have faded in her mind, vague images only with no sensation associated. Written history describes them so: sweltering heat, trees turning to bronze, and frigid rains. Her skin does not prickle with the memory.

Themysciran nights are cool, but not cold. She had forgotten, honestly, what real cold is.

The metal ball lodged in her chest is very, very cold.

* * *

 

Aegis-holding Zeus warps existence, and Themyscira is removed from the tapestry of the world.

Antiope watches as the storm on the horizon vanishes, thunderbolts flashing. Her fingers entwine with Menalippe’s, seated on the cliff above a beach. Menalippe leans against her shoulder, resting her shield before them.

The wine-dark seas calm. The crashing of waves a hundred meters below fades.

Hippolyta returns from her final congress with the father of gods and men. She carries with her a squirming bundle.

“Diana,” she names the infant child.

Dark brown eyes shine up at them, dancing with joy.

Antiope pokes her nose.

Diana grabs her finger, squeezing as hard as her newborn hands can. She is strong, strong even for an Amazon, even at this size.

Antiope smiles. “She could only be your daughter,” she says. Menalippe laughs, her voice ringing in Antiope’s ears.

“She is to be the Godkiller,” Hippolyta says.

Menalippe’s laughter ceases.

Gods die. The curse of men has proven that, leaving mighty Zeus with only the strength for these last two acts.

There is only one god left now.

The fear that settles in Antiope’s gut is very, very cold.

 

* * *

 

Her sisters do not fall without price. Antiope’s kin die in pairs, the Athenians die in scores.

The Athenian force breaks against Amazonian shields. The battle takes days. Eventually, their ships are emptied of maddened slavers to kill.

Antiope feels nothing. Her bones are too heavy, her blood too thick for it. Carrying the bodies of those she trained with for so many years is all she can manage. Hippolyta will conduct their funerary rites.

She will have to.

Others fling the invaders’ corpses back into their craft and set them ablaze.

Victory is theirs, however hollow Antiope is.

Her hands are numb, even as she slits the throat of the ox over the altar. The animal struggles as its life bleeds out of it. Alone, Antiope holds it in place until it finally goes still.

The ox’s meat is tough, leaner now with the harvest season over.

When it has been consumed, leaving what fat there is and the bones in offering, it is not Athena, girded in armor, that is there to touch Antiope.

It is Menalippe, whose warmth seeps slowly into Antiope’s core. Antiope sinks back into her embrace, and finally, finally, hot wet tears begin to flow.

Even in the arms of her beloved, the temple is very, very cold.

* * *

 

Wielding Pallas’ spear does not come easy. Every second it is in her hands, Antiope wishes she was instead holding a peel. Working an oven, kneading dough, these things come naturally.

Antiope’s hands bleed the first five months she spends drilling with it. Her training partners are just as clumsy to start, but every day she can feel their growth. Every day, they are faster, they see her movements coming earlier, their own are more subtle.

Hippolyta is the fastest of them all.

The only thing Antiope can claim is time. Her days of work are longer than her sisters - she is there for the first of them to arrive, and there to send the last of them off. The searing heat burns her arms, her shoulders, her neck.

In the end, it is only when Menalippe comes for her that she leaves the fields.

The water she soaks her blistered hands in is very, very cold.

* * *

 

Grey-eyed Athena places a spear in her hand.

“This is not what you were made for,” she says. “But you will excel at it.”

The weight of the spear is strange, and Antiope does not know what to do with it. She longs for her stolen kopis, blade chipped and broken though it was when she left it. Instead, she plants the spear on the trireme deck as her kin continue to board.

It holds her weight.

Hippolyta, now in conference with wide-seeing Zeus, asked her to stand for her sisters. And so, though Antiope wants nothing more than to curl into a ball in a dark corner, she stands above the boarding ramp.

“I entrust their safety to you.”

Her arms feel sticky in the night breeze. Antiope would scrub them with her sleeves, had she not torn them off already to do so.

The clouds above open up, and let the winter rain begin to fall.

It is very, very cold.

* * *

 

The first time Antiope saw Menalippe, crawling fully formed from the Scythian mud, she could not have told her apart from any of their sisters. Even Antiope’s own hair had been dark then, caked with the mud of their birth.

Antiope claws her way to her feet. Around her, Amazons rise. Before her, Zeus, father of gods and men, moulds her kin by the dozen, wildflowers blooming across the bank where he kneels. Behind him, Ares of the golden helm watches, clutching his spear in hand.

An arm brushes her leg. Antiope reaches down, grasps her blood by the wrist, and hauls her to her feet.

Menalippe meets her eyes. Antiope releases her arm, Menalippe catches her hand and squeezes it briefly.

There is a splash behind her. Antiope turns to see Hippolyta submerged in the river, scrubbing herself clean.

Menalippe shoves her in.

The water of the Borysthenes River is very, very cold.

* * *

 

The iron in her chest is very, very cold.

Menalippe’s tears on her face are not. Breathing is agony. Antiope lets out an explosive cough, splattering blood across her wife’s features.

Her hand spasms, and Hippolyta lets out a sharp breath.

Every fiber of her body knows pain.

But Themyscira knows only spring.

**Author's Note:**

> Just to be clear, epithets that were not directly associated with their gods:
> 
> Pallas is Athena.
> 
> The curse of men is Ares.


End file.
